As a rule, billiard balls need to be cleaned as frequently as possible to wipe out chalk powders, dirt, specks and finger marks left on the surfaces of the billiard balls during the course of their use. This is mainly because the billiard balls with soiled or unclean surfaces are unlikely to travel straight when struck by a cue stick, and thus fails to roll as a long distance as a player normally expect, eventually depriving the player of amusement.
Manual cleaning is a traditional method of rendering the billiard balls clean and lustrous. More specifically, the billiard balls are first applied with a cleaning agent one by one and then vigorously rubbed with a soft fabric until the surfaces thereof grow clean. It is usual for commercial billiard halls to provide customers with tens of billiard balls at a time. This means that the number of billiard balls to be cleaned within a given period of time is exceptionally high. The task of manually cleaning so many billiard balls on a one-by-one basis is time-consuming and high onerous. At a large-scale billiard hall where many cueists play the billiard games, no sufficient time is given to clean the used billiard balls for the next cycle of use. This makes it unavoidable to prepare a large number of fresh billiard balls in advance or to employ clerks who should devote themselves to ball cleaning works.
The present inventor has developed a ball cleaning device capable of solving the problems noted above, which was matured into U.S. Pat. No. 5,546,629 on Aug. 20, 1996. The ball cleaning device includes a housing having a sidewall, a top access opening and a bottom, a cleaning fabric provided on an inner surface of the sidewall, a spindle rotatably fitted through the bottom of the housing to extend upwards parallel to the sidewall, a turntable coaxially mounted on the spindle for rotational movement therewith and adapted to support a plurality of game balls, an idle wheel mounted on the turntable for rotation relative to the turntable, the idle wheel having a plurality of compartments arranged along a circumference thereof, each compartment receiving each of the game balls in a spaced-apart relationship with one another, and a means for rotatably driving the spindle and the turntable in unison to enable the game balls to make rolling movement and planetary movement around the spindle so that the idle wheel can be pushed by the game balls into rotation about the spindle.
From the viewpoint of size reduction, weight loss and cost-effectiveness, the present inventor has also developed a ball cleaning and polishing machine, which was matured into U.S. Pat. No. 6,643,881 on Nov. 11, 2003. The ball cleaning and polishing machine includes a housing, a cleaning barrel extending vertically upwards from the housing and having a cylindrical interior surface, a lining provided on the interior surface of the cleaning barrel and having a plurality of protuberances substantially uniformly spaced apart in a circumferential direction of the lining, a turntable adapted to support a plurality of game balls within the cleaning barrel and provided with a cleaning fabric remaining in contact with the game balls, an impeller coaxially provided above the turntable for rotation relative to the turntable and for keeping the game balls isolated from one another, and an electric motor drivingly connected to the turntable for causing the turntable to rotate such that the game balls can be rubbed with the cleaning fabric.
The ball cleaning and polishing machine cited above suffers from a problem in that the billiard balls collide with the lining in the cleaning process, thereby generating vibrations and noises. Since the lining is attached to the inner circumferential surface of the cleaning barrel at a right angle with respect to the turntable, the billiard balls continue to remain on the turntable even if a strong centrifugal force is applied to the billiard balls in the cleaning process. Thus, the billiard balls rotate at a high speed particularly near the outer edge of the turntable. This tends to increase vibrations and noises and reduce cleaning efficiency. The protuberances uniformly spaced apart in a circumferential direction of the lining have a limit in changing the rotation direction of the billiard balls and enhancing the cleaning efficiency. In addition, the ball cleaning and polishing machine cited above has a drawback in that the cleaning fluid supply structure is too complex.